Kit review: The Forgefiend/Maulerfiend Part 3

Construction: Day two

So, I’m basically calling and end to this model at this stage. Yes I still have a couple little details to add to the model. I’m actually throwing my hands up and saying “Nope. I’m done with it.” Those of you who have seem my projects and prior review can appreciate what it takes for me to say that about a kit, but the Fiend kit… it just sucks. The construction of it is near brain numbingly simple and yet offers no easy way to allow switching between a Mauler and ForgeFiend out of the box. I can’t really tell whether the designers were brilliant in this approach and did it deliberately or heinously under skilled and got super lucky with it, but the way the kit is designed it would a very capable converter working with extra materials and a pre-understanding of the kit to modify it in such a way to successfully allow switching types between Mauler and Forge. I can say that sincerely because now, after built this kit were I to go back and build another one with the explicit intent to allow configuration swapping I would still require plasticard, plastirod, green stuff, and magnets and know what I was going to do before I began assembling the kit. But, let me complete the review.

One of the key points of curiosity raised about the kit was how possible it is to build it in such a way as to allow switching configurations. Well, not very. At first glance you’d probably think “Eh no biggie. Just slap some magnets in the neck and on the joins to allow swapping of the guns and call it a day.”

Yeah not so much. 

 

 

 The Hades canons work alright like this but the ectoplasm cannons are too heavy for these magnets I’ve used to hold the cannons up by themselves.
The other big issue is the extreme ‘staticness’ of the model. It’s completely designed to be in a very static pose either with four legs and 2 guns, or with the fists and tentacles. There’s very little customization ability out of the box.


Next time, the HelDrake.